Weightlifters often overlook their hands, and take their grip and hands for granted. But if you pay close attention to your hands, you will learn to use them at full capacity for a greater lifts. A lot of people complain about hand and wrist pain, and soreness after they work out. Their hands feel tired and it hurts them to touch another surface. Did you ever experience this?

While they may be many reasons why you could experience hand and wrist pain, the most common reason is the misdiagnosed or unreported overuse injury. And yes, these can happen to the hands too, more often than you think! Learn what are the most common causes for hand pain and what you can do to fix it in order to lift heavier.

Do you experience hand pain?

Overuse Injuries and Arthritis - Repetitive heavy strain on muscles and tendons will lead to micro-tears in the tissue and cause 'tendonitis'. Flexor tendonitis in the fingers is known as 'trigger finger', because the inflamed digital tendon triggers within the tendon sheath in the palm. This can happen to the wrist as well, and if untreated, it will lead to elbow and shoulder pain too.

Another cause for hand pain could be arthritis. With age, the cartilage in your joints begin to break down. It's role is to reduce the shock felt in a joint, but the loss of cartilage increases the impact of the weight on your hands. If you have this, seek a doctor for adequate measures to help you combat arthritis.

Blood Pressure - High blood pressure in your hands could be another reason why your hands might hurt. Gripping weight causes an isometric contraction of the muscles in your forearm and hand, in order to hold the weights. This type of contraction can block blood flow in and out of your hand, and that increases blood pressure in the hand.

This can also happen if you grip the bar too hard. Hold the bar just enough that it wouldn't slip from your hands. Loosen your grip to see if it helps. Wear weightlifting gloves because they help you use less force to keep the bar from slipping. However, if these tips don't work, perhaps your overall blood pressure is too high, and you need to seek professional medical advice immediately.

Fatigue - As you workout, your hands and forearms muscles get tired from holding the weights. Pain and a burning sensation in your forearms and hands can be a result of the hand muscles being worked to failure. Consider wearing a pair of workout gloves to protect your hand muscles against fatigue.

Knurling - This is a slip-resistant etching in the area of the bar where you place your hands. It prevents the bar from slipping from your hands, which in turn prevents the weight from dropping and causing damage. However, this knurling can cause your skin to tear and the pads at the base of each finger, as the friction with the bar pulls the skin. This can also cause calluses and blisters, but if you want to prevent this from happening, make sure you wear some weightlifting gloves.

Use your hands at full capacity!

Pressure - When you lift heavy, most of the pressure of your lift is gathered in your hands. And if your hands are fatigued, your performance will be poor, to say the least. To spread the pressure from your hands and to your other muscles, wear a pair of workout gloves.

This will help you relieve the pressure on your hands and it will allow you to move beyond the limitation of your hands, which means it will allow you to lift even heavier. You will not be able to support a lot of weight for a longer time with just your bare hands, so the gloves will help you increase the pressure capacity in your hands and spread it to your muscles.

Wrist Support - Not only your grip needs a little bit of help with the heavy weights, but so do your wrists. Wrists injuries are very common and including some wrist support to your gym gear is the best way to ensure that your ligaments and tendons are protected, especially when you bend your wrist backwards. Again, lifting gloves behave like extra ligaments when working out, and they provide extra wrist support if they are the kind that wrap around your wrist too.

Calluses and Blisters - possibly the only bad part about lifting weights for a long time. Not only are they unattractive, but they can hinder your performance, due to pain and discomfort, and even prevent your from working out until they pass. There are ways you can remove calluses and blisters, but wearing gloves prevents them from happening all together.

Increased Weight - One way you can use your hands to become stronger, is to increase the weight you are lifting. However, it's a bit hard to achieve that with just your bare hands. Workout gloves will help you increase your weight by distributing the weight of the lift to your forearms, and relieve the pressure from your fingers. This is extremely useful for exercises like deadlifts and upright rows.

Strengthening - Improve your grip on weights and learn the which is the appropriate width of your grip for your lifts. Every time you grab a weight, you work out your grip and forearm. However, simply grabbing a weight and holding it is not enough. Exercises like wrist curls, pinch gripping, hanging will definitely do the trick instead.

Now that you know how important hands are to your lifts, gains and overall athletic performance, make sure that you give them the car and attention they deserve! While it may sound silly to ‘train you palm’, make sure that you do just that! Strengthen your grip if you want to be able to increase your load.

And don’t be shy to invest in a good pair of workout gloves. These are guaranteed to not only help you train your grip, but protect your hands against fatigue, against calluses, and even help stabilize your wrist and prevent it from getting injured. So, do you take care of your hands? Click here to learn how to properly take care from them and prevent the appearance of of calluses!